11/22/63

by Stephen King

  "You lost me."

  "I'm a Jew, cuz."

  He saw my expression and grinned. "You didn't know. Even when I wouldn't eat any of your lobster, you didn't know. I'm touched."

  "I'm just trying to figure out why it should make a difference," I said.

  He laughed as though this were the best joke he'd heard all year. "Then you was born under a cabbage leaf instead of in a trunk."

  In the mirror, Frank Dunning was talking. Tony Tracker and his friends were listening with big grins on their faces. When they exploded into bull roars of laughter, I wondered if it had been the one about the three jigs stuck in the elevator or maybe something even more amusing and satiric--three Yids on a golf course, maybe.

  Chaz saw me looking. "Frank knows how to make a party go, all right. You know where he works? No, you're new in town, I forgot. Center Street Market. He's the head butcher. Also half-owner, although he don't advertise it. You know what? He's half the reason that place stands up and makes a profit. Draws the ladies like bees to honey."

  "Does he, now?"

  "Yep, and the men like him, too. That's not always the case. Fellas don't always like a ladies' man."

  That made me think of my ex-wife's fierce Johnny Depp fixation.

  "But it's not like the old days when he'd drink with em until closin, then play poker with em down at the freight depot until the crack of dawn. These days he'll have one beer--maybe two--and then he's out the door. You watch."

  It was a behavior pattern I knew about firsthand from Christy's sporadic efforts to control her booze intake rather than stop altogether. It would work for awhile, but sooner or later she always went off the deep end.

  "Drinking problem?" I asked.

  "Don't know about that, but he's sure got a temper problem." He looked down at the tattoo on his forearm. "Milly, you ever notice how many funny fellas have got a mean streak?"

  Milly flipped her tail. Chaz looked at me solemnly. "See? The women always know." He snuck a Lobster Pickin' and shot his eyes comically from side to side. He was a very amusing fellow, and it never crossed my mind that he was anything other than what he claimed to be. But, as Chaz himself had implied, I was a bit on the naive side. Certainly for Derry. "Don't tell Rabbi Snoresalot."

  "Your secret's safe with me."

  By the way the men at the Tracker table were leaning toward Frank, he had launched into another joke. He was the kind of man who talked a lot with his hands. They were big hands. It was easy to imagine one of them holding the haft of a Craftsman hammer.

  "He ripped and roared something terrible back in high school," Chaz said. "You're looking at a guy who knows, because I went to the old County Consolidated with him. But I mostly kept out of his way. Suspensions left and right. Always for fighting. He was supposed to go to the University of Maine, but he got a girl pregnant and ended up getting married instead. After a year or two of it, she collected the baby and scrammed. Probably a smart idea, the way he was then. Frankie was the kind of guy, fighting the Germans or the Japs probably would have been good for im--get all that mad out, you know. But he came up 4-F. I never heard why. Flat feet? Heart murmur? The high blood? No way of telling. But you probably don't want to hear all this old gossip."

  "I do," I said. "It's interesting." It sure was. I'd come into The Lamplighter to wet my whistle and had stumbled into a gold mine instead. "Have another Lobster Pickin'."

  "Twist my arm," he said, and popped one into his mouth. He jerked a thumb at the mirror as he chewed. "And why shouldn't I? Just look at those guys back there--half of em Catholics and still chowing up on burgers n BLTs n sausage subs. On Friday! Who can make sense of religion, cuz?"

  "You got me," I said. "I'm a lapsed Methodist. Guess Mr. Dunning never got that college education, huh?"

  "Nope, by the time his first wife done her midnight flit, he was gettin a graduate degree in cuttin meat, and he was good at it. Got into some more trouble--and yeah, drinkin was somewhat involved from what I heard, people gossip terrible, y'know, and a man who owns pawnshops hears it all--so Mr. Vollander, him who owned the market back in those days, he sat down and had a Dutch uncle talk with ole Frankie." Chaz shook his head and picked another Pickin'. "If Benny Vollander had ever known Frankie Dunning was gonna own half the place by the time that Korea shit was over, he probably would have had a brain hemorrhage. Good thing we can't see the future, isn't it?"

  "That would complicate things, all right."

  Chaz was warming to his story, and when I told the waitress to bring another couple of beers, he didn't tell her no.

  "Benny Vollander said Frankie was the best 'prentice butcher he'd ever had, but if he got in any more trouble with the cops--fightin if anyone farted sideways, in other words--he'd have to let him go. A word to the wise is sufficient, they say, and Frankie straightened up. Divorced that first wife of his on grounds of desertion after she was gone a year or two, then remarried not long after. The war was goin full steam by then and he could have had his pick of the ladies--he has that charm, you know, and most of the competition was overseas, anyway--but he settled on Doris McKinney. Lovely girl she was."

  "And still is, I'm sure."

  "Absolutely, cuz. Pretty as a picture. They've got three or four kids. Nice family." Chaz leaned close again. "But Frankie still loses his temper now and then, and he must have lost it at her last spring, because she turned up at church with bruises on her face and a week later he was out the door. He's living in a rooming house as close as he could get to the old homestead. Hopin she'll take him back, I imagine. And sooner or later, she will. He's got that charming way of--whoops, lookie there, what'd I tell you? He's a gone cat."

  Dunning was getting up. The other men were bellowing for him to sit back down, but he was shaking his head and pointing to his watch. He tipped the last swallow of his beer down his throat, then bent and kissed one man's bald head. This brought a room-shaking roar of approval and Dunning surfed on it toward the door.

  He slapped Chaz on the back as he went by and said, "Keep that nose clean, Chazzy--it's too long to get dirty."

  Then he was gone. Chaz looked at me. He was giving me the cheerful chipmunk grin, but his eyes weren't smiling. "Ain't he a card?"

  "Sure," I said.

  9

  I'm one of those people who doesn't really know what he thinks until he writes it down, so I spent most of that weekend making notes about what I'd seen in Derry, what I'd done, and what I planned to do. They expanded into an explanation of how I'd gotten to Derry in the first place, and by Sunday I realized that I'd started a job that was too big for a pocket notebook and ballpoint pen. On Monday I went out and bought a portable typewriter. My intention had been to go to the local business supply store, but then I saw Chaz Frati's card on the kitchen table, and went there instead. It was on East Side Drive, a pawnshop almost as big as a department store. The three gold balls were over the door, as was traditional, but there was something else, as well: a plaster mermaid flapping her flippy tail and winking one eye. This one, being out in public, was wearing a bra top. Frati himself was not in evidence, but I got a terrific Smith-Corona for twelve dollars. I told the clerk to tell Mr. Frati that George the real estate guy had been in.

  "Happy to do it, sir. Would you like to leave your card?"

  Shit. I'd have to have some of those printed . . . which meant a visit to Derry Business Supply after all. "Left them in my other suit coat," I said, "but I think he'll remember me. We had a drink at The Lamplighter."

  That afternoon I began expanding my notes.

  10

  I got used to the planes coming in for a landing directly over my head. I arranged for newspaper and milk delivery: thick glass bottles brought right to your doorstep. Like the root beer Frank Anicetti had served me on my first jaunt into 1958, the milk tasted incredibly full and rich. The cream was even better. I didn't know if artificial creamers had been invented yet, and had no intention of finding out. Not with this stuff around.

 
The days slipped by. I read Al Templeton's notes on Oswald until I could have quoted long passages by heart. I visited the library and read about the murders and the disappearances that had plagued Derry in 1957 and 1958. I looked for stories about Frank Dunning and his famous bad temper, but found none; if he had ever been arrested, the story hadn't made it into the newspaper's Police Beat column, which was good-sized on most days and usually expanded to a full page on Mondays, when it contained a full summary of the weekend's didoes (most of which happened after the bars closed). The only story I found about the janitor's father concerned a 1955 charity drive. The Center Street Market had contributed ten percent of their profits that fall to the Red Cross, to help out after hurricanes Connie and Diane slammed into the East Coast, killing two hundred and causing extensive flood damage in New England. There was a picture of Harry's father handing an oversized check to the regional head of the Red Cross. Dunning was flashing that movie-star smile.

  I made no more shopping trips to the Center Street Market, but on two weekends--the last in September and the first in October--I followed Derry's favorite butcher after he finished his half-day Saturday stint behind the meat counter. I rented nondescript Hertz Chevrolets from the airport for this chore. The Sunliner, I felt, was a little too conspicuous for shadowing.

  On the first Saturday afternoon, he went to a Brewer flea market in a Pontiac he kept in a downtown pay-by-the-month garage and rarely used during the workweek. On the following Sunday, he drove to his house on Kossuth Street, collected his kids, and took them to a Disney double feature at the Aladdin. Even at a distance, Troy, the eldest, looked bored out of his mind both going into the theater and coming out.

  Dunning didn't enter the house for either the pickup or the drop-off. He honked for the kids when he arrived and let them off at the curb when they came back, watching until all four were inside. He didn't drive off immediately even then, only sat behind the wheel of the idling Bonneville, smoking a cigarette. Maybe hoping the lovely Doris might want to come out and talk. When he was sure she wouldn't, he used a neighbor's driveway to turn around in and sped off, squealing his tires hard enough to send up little splurts of blue smoke.

  I slumped in the seat of my rental, but I needn't have bothered. He never looked in my direction as he passed, and when he was a good distance down Witcham Street, I followed along after. He returned his car to the garage where he kept it, went to The Lamplighter for a single beer at the nearly deserted bar, then trudged back to Edna Price's rooms on Charity Avenue with his head down.

  The following Saturday, October fourth, he collected his kids and took them to the football game at the University of Maine in Orono, some thirty miles away. I parked on Stillwater Avenue and waited for the game to be over. On the way back they stopped at the Ninety-Fiver for dinner. I parked at the far end of the parking lot and waited for them to come out, reflecting that the life of a private eye must be a boring one, no matter what the movies would have us believe.

  When Dunning delivered his children back home, dusk was creeping over Kossuth Street. Troy had clearly enjoyed football more than the adventures of Cinderella; he exited his father's Pontiac grinning and waving a Black Bears pennant. Tugga and Harry also had pennants and also seemed energized. Ellen, not so much. She was fast asleep. Dunning carried her to the door of the house in his arms. This time Mrs. Dunning made a brief appearance--just long enough to take the little girl into her own arms.

  Dunning said something to Doris. Her reply didn't seem to please him. The distance was too great to read his expression, but he was wagging a finger at her as he spoke. She listened, shook her head, turned, and went inside. He stood there a moment or two, then took off his hat and slapped it against his leg.

  All interesting--and instructive of the relationship--but no help otherwise. Not what I was looking for.

  I got that the following day. I had decided to make only two reconnaissance passes that Sunday, feeling that, even in a dark brown rental unit that almost faded into the landscape, more would be risking notice. I saw nothing on the first one and figured he was probably in for the day, and why not? The weather had turned gray and drizzly. He was probably watching sports on TV with the rest of the boarders, all of them smoking up a storm in the parlor.

  But I was wrong. Just as I turned onto Witcham for my second pass, I saw him walking toward downtown, today dressed in blue jeans, a windbreaker, and a wide-brimmed waterproof hat. I drove past him and parked on Main Street about a block up from the garage he used. Twenty minutes later I was following him out of town to the west. Traffic was light, and I kept well back.

  His destination turned out to be Longview Cemetery, two miles past the Derry Drive-In. He stopped at a flower stand across from it, and as I drove by, I saw him buying two baskets of fall flowers from an old lady who held a big black umbrella over both of them during the transaction. I watched in my rearview mirror as he put the flowers on the passenger seat of his car, got back in, and drove up the cemetery's access road.

  I turned around and drove back to Longview. This was taking a risk, but I had to chance it, because this looked good. The parking lot was empty except for two pickups loaded with groundkeeping equipment under tarps and a dinged-up old payloader that looked like war surplus. No sign of Dunning's Pontiac. I drove across the lot toward the gravel lane leading into the cemetery itself, which was huge, sprawling over as many as a dozen hilly acres.

  In the cemetery proper, smaller lanes split off from the main one. Groundfog was rising up from the dips and valleys, and the drizzle was thickening into rain. Not a good day for visiting the dear departed, all in all, and Dunning had the place to himself. His Pontiac, parked halfway up a hill on one of the feeder lanes, was easy to spot. He was placing the flower baskets before two side-by-side graves. His parents', I assumed, but I didn't really care. I turned my car around and left him to it.

  By the time I got back to my Harris Avenue apartment, that fall's first hard rain was pounding the city. Downtown, the canal would be roaring, and the peculiar thrumming that came up through the concrete in the Low Town would be more noticeable than ever. Indian summer seemed to be over. I didn't care about that, either. I opened my notebook, flipped almost to the end before I found a blank page, and wrote October 5th, 3:45 PM, Dunning to Longview Cem, puts flowers on parents' (?) graves. Rain.

  I had what I wanted.

  CHAPTER 8

  1

  In the weeks before Halloween, Mr. George Amberson inspected almost every commercial-zoned piece of property in Derry and the surrounding towns.

  I knew better than to believe that I'd ever be accepted as a townie on short notice, but I wanted to get the locals accustomed to the sight of my sporty red Sunliner convertible, just part of the scenery. There goes that real estate fella, been here almost a month now. If he knows what he's doin, there might be some money in it for someone.

  When people asked me what I was looking for, I'd give a wink and a smile. When people asked me how long I'd be staying, I told them it was hard to say. I learned the geography of the town, and I began to learn the verbal geography of 1958. I learned, for instance, that the war meant World War II; the conflict meant Korea. Both were over, and good riddance. People worried about Russia and the so-called "missile gap," but not too much. People worried about juvenile delinquency, but not too much. There was a recession, but people had seen worse. When you bargained with someone, it was absolutely okay to say that you jewed em down (or got gypped). Penny candy included dots, wax lips, and niggerbabies. In the South, Jim Crow ruled. In Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev bellowed threats. In Washington, President Eisenhower droned good cheer.

  I made a point of checking out the defunct Kitchener Ironworks not long after speaking with Chaz Frati. It was in a large overgrown stretch of empty to the north of town, and yes, it would be the perfect spot for a shopping mall once the extension of the Mile-A-Minute Highway reached it. But on the day I visited--leaving my car and walking when the road turned to a
xle-smashing rubble--it could have been the ruin of an ancient civilization: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Heaps of brick and rusty chunks of old machinery poked out of the high grass. In the middle was a long-collapsed ceramic smokestack, its sides blackened by soot, its huge bore full of darkness. If I'd lowered my head and hunched over, I could have walked into it, and I am not a short man.

  I saw a lot of Derry in those weeks before Halloween, and I felt a lot of Derry. Longtime residents were pleasant to me, but--with one exception--never chummy. Chaz Frati was that exception, and in retrospect I guess his unprompted revelations should have struck me as odd, but I had a great many things on my mind, and Frati didn't seem all that important. I thought, sometimes you just meet a friendly guy, that's all, and let it go at that. Certainly I had no idea that a man named Bill Turcotte had put Frati up to it.

  Bill Turcotte, aka No Suspenders.

  2

  Bevvie-from-the-levee had said she thought the bad times in Derry were over, but the more of it I saw (and the more I felt--that especially), the more I came to believe that Derry wasn't like other places. Derry wasn't right. At first I tried to tell myself that it was me, not the town. I was a man out of joint, a temporal bedouin, and any place would have felt a little strange to me, a little skewed--like the cities that seem so much like bad dreams in those strange Paul Bowles novels. This was persuasive at first, but as the days passed and I continued to explore my new environment, it became less so. I even began to question Beverly Marsh's assertion that the bad times were over, and imagined (on nights when I couldn't sleep, and there were quite a few of those) that she questioned it herself. Hadn't I glimpsed a seed of doubt in her eyes? The look of someone who doesn't quite believe but wants to? Maybe even needs to?

  Something wrong, something bad.

  Certain empty houses that seemed to stare like the faces of people suffering from terrible mental illness. An empty barn on the outskirts of town, the hayloft door swinging slowly open and closed on rusty hinges, first disclosing darkness, then hiding it, then disclosing it again. A splintered fence on Kossuth Street, just a block away from the house where Mrs. Dunning and her children lived. To me that fence looked as if something--or someone--had been hurled through it and into the Barrens below. An empty playground with the roundy-round slowly spinning even though there were no kids to push it and no appreciable wind to turn it. It screamed on its hidden bearings as it moved. One day I saw a roughly carved Jesus go floating down the canal and into the tunnel that ran beneath Canal Street. It was three feet long. The teeth peeped from lips parted in a snarling grin. A crown of thorns, jauntily askew, circled the forehead; bloody tears had been painted below the thing's weird white eyes. It looked like a juju fetish. On the so-called Kissing Bridge in Bassey Park, amid the declarations of school spirit and undying love, someone had carved the words I WILL KILL MY MOTHER SOON, and below it someone had added: NOT SOON ENOUGH SHES FULL OF DISEEZE. One afternoon while walking on the east side of the Barrens, I heard a terrible squealing and looked up to see the silhouette of a thin man standing on the GS & WM railroad trestle not far away. A stick rose and fell in his hand. He was beating something. The squealing stopped and I thought, It was a dog and he's finished with it. He took it out there on a rope leash and beat it until it was dead. There was no way I could have known such a thing, of course . . . and yet I did. I was sure then, and I am now.